Ro Year 7

The Seventh Year

Today is the first day of your very first summer vacation. Much like many boys your age this is a special day. A break from Daddy waking you up, getting you dressed, combing your hair, driving to school and kissing you goodbye. Although the whole great ready for school process seldom takes more than 15-20 minutes, we both prefer the schedule where we have no plans and have activity when we are ready. This morning you start off with chocolate milk and Batman and Superman animated series on TV. Ah the good life. Who knows when we will get dressed and do anything today. Well actually we will have to by 11 am as daddy has a meeting and I will take you to Mommy's work for lunch with her. You always enjoy being in her office and spending time there. It always seems like a magical place up 26 floors in downtown Dallas. Your kindergarten had graduation this week. Why I don't know. Maybe mostly to get parents to burn up some more video tape on our cameras. It was fun to watch. We are always surprised to see you sing as you never indicate you have learned any songs nor do you sing them at home. You love being on the stage. You just informed me it is 8 O'clock so obviously kindergarten has taught you how to tell time. Of course why this is important is that we made the mistake of telling you that you will be going to Mommy's work today and you are now ready to go. I have tried to explain to you that we won't go for three more hours when it is 11 o'clock. It is still a sweet time in our lives as the only reality in your life is not the past nor the future even three hours from now. We still live in the moment and it is a good way to live. So Daddy now makes the switch from having7 hours away from you to having you 24/7. This is a good thing, because as always this is a good thing as from day one you have always understood that daddy works when you are home. You also know that if you need me, work is over and you are my first priority. So we have a summer of fun being little boys together, my 6 year old and his 61 year old dad. I love you Dad (Entry of June 5, 2008)

I thought that this would be a cool addition to your journal. We asked your kindergarten teacher, Miss Jennifer Brown to tell us of your year with her for us and you to remember. This what she had to say: "Since meeting Ro in August I've seen Ro grow from a quiet, shy boy to an
obedient, talkative and happy kid that enjoys school and his friends. I believe Ro's first friend was Anna and throughout the school year they
remained good friends but Ro also created friendships with other students. I specifically remember the time I paired Ro and Justin to
work as partners for a game. After the game was over Ro ran up to me and said, "Miss Brown!!! Me and Justin are friends now!!!" He was so
excited to have another friend in class! His enthusiasm and excitement for gaining another friend are one of the reasons I love teaching. The
smallest or simplest occurences in a child's day are usually the most meaningful to them. Ro enjoys friendships and treats each friend with
kindess and expects the same from them as well.

Ro began Kindergarten knowing most of his letters and letter sounds. As the year progressed Ro quickly learned how to blend the letter sounds together in order to read words. From a teacher's perspective it's always exciting to see that a child understands HOW to blend letter
sounds because this is the foundation of learning to read. Ro made wonderful progress throughout the school year as he learned more short
vowel sounds to blend. This is an indicator to me that Ro will succeed in learning to read with long vowel sounds, word patterns, etc.

Without a doubt in my mind I've enjoyed getting to know Ro. He's caring, giving and treats others as he wants to be treated. Ro enjoyed
'suprising' me with gifts every once in awhile. The most memorable moments I have of Ro are the times Ro would intentionally sit next to me
when we sat in a circle on the rug. Ro wasn't one of the children that often showed affection however anytime I sat on the floor with the kids
Ro already made up his mind that we were sitting together and he would make sure of it! Throughout the lesson Ro would lean against me and I smiled inside knowing that Ro loved sitting next to his teacher :)" (Entry of June 9, 2008)

Today is Father's Day. Your dad is pretty much against most of our man-made holidays. These days are a day for people to spend money. Good for business. I really don't need a card or a gift. Every day that I wake up I get to live in your world. It is a beautiful world. There are no schedules, there are no yesterdays, and there are no tomorrows. The words, Dad! Watch me!, are an important part of every day. Indeed it is a joy to watch you. You don't have to ask or demand. I guess I am a fortunate human being as I have been given the daily gift of watching my son grow up. I have been there for nearly all of your life moments. I have not missed anything. The most important thing for me on this man-made day is hear you say, Dad, Sit with me? That I will and the next day, and the next day. Happy Father's Day to me! The luckiest Dad on earth! (entry of June 15, 2008)

Well summer is full swing and yes just two weeks, I am getting a little tired of "Hey Dad!" Hey Dad, look at me" Dad!, Dad! Dad! But on the other hand it is better than the alternative. We are becoming Olympic quality swimmers. About 1-2 hours daily is taking care of that. Howver, it does not take too long to run out of fun things to do in the water when you are in the pool every day. But between going the fitness club everyday, watching TV and playing on the computer, the days fly by. It is a hard job doing nothing everyday. Love Dad. (Entry of June 30, 2008)

Our summer of fun is speeding by. Today I took you to church camp that you will be going to half days for a week. You were not too excited as your lazy hazy summer schedule was definitely thrown off. You are strange in one respect. You have no desire to leave the house. You could stay here all day with nothing but underpants and a pajama top all day and you would be good to go. There have been some great moments this summer and when we are experiencing them, I think I should rush to the computer and rwrite them down, but I always say I will do it later and by the time I do make it, I forget what was so important. The best part of summer has been you and I playing pretend games. No toys, no TV, just you and I pretending to be ghosts, zombies or some kind of super hero. You are very much in to being powerful aand overtaking the world and saving others. We laugh, we play, we live good. It is a perfect world! I love you. Your Dad. (Entry of July 14, 2008)

You are off to church camp this week. Not out in the woods but at your church. The first day you didn't really want to go because you and Dad had a pretty easy fun schedule going, However once you found out the fun places you were going every day, Dad was a forgotten person. So you've seen a movie, gone roller skating (guess what roller skates are now #1 on your list for Dad to buy) gymnastics and bowling. Everyday you bring something with you that you have crafted that is a new surprise for your Dad. You are focused now on your age and growing up. Now that you are 6, you want to be 7. The fact that you need bigger shoes and clothes is paramount to you. Once you get in the car, usually your first thing to discuss is about how big and old you getting. You are not a baby and a big boy and you let me know several times a day. I love you (Entry of July 17, 2008)

This past week, daddy had minor surgery on his arm. I tried to take you to all the appointments and you with me just before and after surgery. I wanted medical experiences to be something you did not fear and understood that it is just one of those things that happens in life. You thought it was a good time and it gave you a chance to be with your mom and dad. The bad side of it was, daddy cannot go in the swimming pool for several weeks and the pool has little interest to you without your mom or dad to abuse. Yesterday was a big day for you because you got a new Spiderman backpack and some new sketchers for school. Before going to bed last night, you had to show me where your new back pack was and show me in a dark room how well your shoes lit up. I thought for a while you were planning on wearing your shoes to bed. Please help me keep life this focused and pleasure with just the simplest of things! My love! (Entry of July 28, 2008)

You are a water boy. I love watching you develop your imagination! Although education is a neccessary base of any life, I believe that the ability to blend well with others and an active imagination are the real keys to living a good life. When we go out the pool you and I will play all kinds of imaginary games that mostly involve me tossing you around in the pool. There is always some imaginary game to go with it. Then i get out, turn on the hose with a nozzle that has 6-7 different spray settings and just sit back and watch you go to the land of imagination. You literally can do this for hours. It is great to watch you. Today after we got out, I needed to water the few plants we have in the back yard. You insisted on doing it yourself. Rather than insisting on me helping you and doing it my way, I just let you lead the way. As you began to water, I took on the voice of the plants. "Ro, please give me a drink of water! Oh thank you! I was so thirsty!" This went on as we watered all the plants and they voiced their happiness with your watering. We laughed. We lived in the moment. Life is good. I hope you learn that in life, you can focus on what you have done. You can think about what may be coming. But in reality the focus should always be what are we doing today. Are we happy? Is life good? A life well-lived should always have its focus on the now. I love you my beautiful son! (Entry of August 7, 2008)

It was a glorious summer! Each day there was something new and grownup about you. You grow at the light of speed now. Just before the enjd of summer we got you grown up bedroom furniture. To this point you have slept on a very simple bunk bed. You call your new bed, your Little Bear Bed because Little Bear of cartoon world has a bed just like you. During one of the first days you had your bed, I was laying in your bed with you and you of course liked the bounciness of your bed most of all and was bouncing up and down. So or course what happened next was you fell off the bed. You did not get hurt, but I made a long conversation that you had to be careful because I did not want you to get hurt. You sat there thinking about it and after a moment you said, "Dad, We need a soft rug!" Actually I like this spirit, we should always look for the bouncy beds in life and if there is a degree of danger to it, well make sure you have a soft rug to go with it! It is the second day of school. You are in the first grade. The silence at home is deafening. Daddy misses you, but I know you are doing great things at school. Today I had to go to lunch at school because you had the latest Spiderman backpack and with it came the greatest lunch box. You wanted all your classmates to see you had the best. The only problem is that there was no food in it and your new teacher did not know that. So I had to go through the lunch line you today to make sure you got lunch and your teacher would know that there might not be food in your lunch box, but it was Ok for you to carry it. By the way thye corny dog and Macaroni and cheese were delicious. As always you are the light of my life! Love Dad (Entry of August 26, 2008)